


Trench Adventure

by stover



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Canon Compliant, Crash Landing, Jealous Keith, M/M, stuck together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2017-04-17
Packaged: 2018-10-20 00:09:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10650942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stover/pseuds/stover
Summary: Lance, Keith, and Lotor are stuck in a ditch and can't get out. Lotor (sort of) hits on Lance. Lance is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Keith is (ಠ益ಠ).





	Trench Adventure

**Author's Note:**

> **Original Prompt:** "Lotor hits on Lance. Keith doesn't take it well."
> 
> Might be continued/expanded. Who knows?

Someone is throwing mud. Big, thick globs of it. The closest one lands half an inch away from his boot, which he spent a good twenty minutes shining. Not that it matters much now, considering how he’s got his ass kissing up a nice warm spot at the bottom of a muddy trench. **  
**

He laughs, because of all the things you’d expect to see in space — where Earth pegs to be the place of lifeforms so brilliant and so advanced — military trenches are the last thing you’d throw out there as something to come across.

Trench warfare must’ve been something real different on this planet, from what he’s seen of it so far. Either that, or the indigenous groups must’ve been giants. The sky is a lengthy strip of black and shimmering white rings of far distant galaxies. He can cut through the sky with only his thumb if he keeps one eye closed, because the walls of the trench shave off the rest for him. That’s how far away they are, that it all looks the way it he sees it. That’s how deep the trench is.

He’s long since given up trying to scale the walls. That, he did only out of desperation, when all else came to a flop. No use in trying something if you kept getting the same results, as the saying goes. That’s the road to insanity. He’s certainly not the brightest of the bunch, but he’s definitely not insane. Creative, sure. A bit odd, sometimes, yeah. But not insane.

Keith is, however. Insane, that is.

“If we can— _aaugh_ — If we can just—” There’s a wet squelch and a growl. “—get to the top, then…!”

Someone dreadful makes a long-suffering sigh, as if they can’t be bothered to witness this any longer. “You’re making it worse.”

The mud squelches as a body slides down the wall of the trench, landing with a splash that nearly pelts him with wet mud. He raises his arm just in time; warm mud sticks only to his arm and chest. Then, he feels a heavy wetness trickle down the side of his face from his hair. He closes his eyes and, slowly, breathes in.

 _“I’m_ making it worse? _You’re_ the one just sitting there and complaining about everything we try!”

He wipes the mud off his face with the back of his hand. “Keith, dude, it’s not that serious.”

Keith whirls around. “Yes, it is,” he hisses. “We’ve been stuck here for days. None of our gear works. We can’t jetpack out of here or call for help. We’re running low on rations, and we’ve been running around like rats in a maze.” As if to punctuate his statement, Keith reels his foot back and swings it forward to give the muddy wall of the trench a good, hard kick.

From across the trench, someone lunges out and latches onto Keith’s foot just before it can make contact with the wall. “No!” they shout, clawed hands tight around Keith’s ankle. Keith loses his balance. His arms are giant pinwheels at his sides as his body tips back and forth.

“Get off me!”

“Stop kicking it! The Blyzark is a sentient creature!”

“The what, now?!”

“You don’t know what a Blyzark is? How do you call yourself a paladin of Voltron?”

“The same way you call yourself the crown prince of an empire run with a million ships, but doesn’t know how to fly one!”

“I have servants to fly me!” wailed the crown prince of the Galra Empire.

He gets up just as Keith falls backwards. Lotor leaps back, wiping his hands on the front of his uniform and looking as miserable as a drowned rat. Keith doesn’t look much better; his wild hair is greasy and slick with mud. His cracked helmet, spidery lines running across the visor, was thrown to the mud long ago, and now sinking all on its lonesome in the mud.

Briefly, he wonders what his hair looks like. Zero volume, and probably a stringy, tangled mess. His bottom lip almost quivers at the thought. How terrible! His face is gonna look twice as long with nothing to balance it out. Still, he reasons, it couldn’t be as bad as Keith’s. That makes him feel a bit better. Sort of. He stares down at the mud on his hands and wonders, for a brief second of what might be stupidity, if he could use this as a face mask and somehow compensate for his lifeless hair.

“Lance, are you hearing this?”

“Hm? What?” He looks up at Keith, who’s somehow managing to sit across from the drowned rat of the Galra Empire without trying to tear off his face. Which was something he’s been struggling with a lot, for some reason. “Sorry, I wasn’t listening.”

Keith folds his arms and frowns. “The planet is alive. The Blyzark is like another Balmerra.”

 _“More_ than a Balmerra,” Lotor corrects with a snide look. “The Blyzark is truly alive. Endanger it, and it will consume.”

Lance scratches off a speck of dried mud off his face. “So, like. Pidge on a bad day.”

A pleased look comes on Lotor’s face, which is somehow completely without any spot of mud. “You are absolutely correct, Lance of Voltron.”

Keith’s eyes narrow. “You don’t even know who we’re talking about.”

Lotor gets up, doing his best to pat and swipe off any traces of mud off his uniform. “Come, Blue Paladin. Allow me to demonstrate the lengths to which the Blyzark is superior to any Balmerra.”

Lance gives the offer a second of thought. Then, he moves one shoulder up and down. “Sure.”

Lotor smiles. It’s pleasant to look at. “As expected of a paladin of Voltron, you are quite eager to familiarize yourself with the foreign cultures within our many galaxies.”

Keith throws a chunk of mud in Lotor’s face. He misses by an inch.

“…!!” “Dude!”

Keith barrels towards him and grabs him by the arm. “We’re talking,” he snarls, “Now.”

Lance lets Keith drag him ten feet away. The moment he’s sure they’re far enough, he pushes down on Keith’s shoulder. “Yo, can you chill out for a sec? It’s not that serious—”

“Don’t look this way when you talk,” says Keith, pointing to his ears. They’re no different than his own, but Lance gets what Keith’s trying to say. Lance never could get away with talking shit about Keith even when they were a whole room apart. And it wasn’t even because Shiro was always around, either.

“Okay, okay, I’ll— Wait, that just looks really stupid if I just, you know, talk to the wall instead of—”

Keith knocks against the armor on his back. “Just do it,” he grumbles.

They’re standing close. He can feel Keith’s breath on his face. It smells sour, like the way your’s would be too if you went three days without brushing your teeth and ate space beetles to keep from starving. Lance wonders if he had rank breath, too. “Hey, does my breath stink? And how’s my hair? It’s not too bad, is it?”

Keith narrows his eyes. “What does that have anything to do with—” He stops suddenly, his eyes widening for a split second before an incredulous look consumes him. “Are you—Are you fucking kidding me right now?” Keith smacks his shoulder with a fist. It actually sort of hurts. “We’re in the middle of fucking nowhere — with no food, no tech, no way to contact the others — and you’re worried about your hair and your breath?”

In the distance, Lance sees the Galra Prince look their way. He saw Lotor’s ears swivel towards them. There was a brief glint of curiosity in Lotor’s eyes. Then, Lotor smiled their way. The smile was nice to look at, as always. But that glint from before, the one that stayed for barely half a second, that grabbed his attention more than anything else about him did. It reminded him of something he’d seen in a NOVA documentary, or somewhere on Animal Planet, or the Discovery Channel.

Something hard hits his chest. “Ow,” says Lance, rubbing the breastplate of his armor. He looks back to Keith, who sends him a fierce gaze fit for battle. “What was that for?”

Keith’s hand grabs his arm. Yellow specks glint from under the dark violet of his eyes. Keith’s jaw clenches and he takes in a deep breath. When he speaks, his voice is even and calm. “I need you to focus, Lance.”

Lance’s brow furrows. “I _am_ focused—”

Keith’s grip on his arm tightens. “No, you’re—” His grip loosens. He takes another breath. “Lance, I— You can’t—” Keith lets go. “Forget it. It’s— Just forget it, I’m— It’s nothing.”

Lance grabs Keith’s hand before it drops. “Hey.” He gives the back of Keith’s neck a rough pat. “Paladins of Voltron, right? We’ve been in worse shit before. We’ll get out of this, this… living planet, or living trench, or— or whatever the fuck this is.”

Keith’s eyes narrow again and he huffs. Lance lets the sour breath hit him in the face. “It’s not your dumb ass I’m worried about.” Keith knocks Lance’s hands off with a scowl. “I’m not worried about you.”

Lance feels his hands move awkwardly at his sides. Finally, he crosses them. “Okay,” he says. “Then can you trust me?”

Keith frowns. “I always do.”

Lance grins. “Then I don’t see any problem.”

Keith gives him a long, hard look. “You’re an idiot,” he says, and stalks off.

Lance watches him turn and walk back to where they were standing. He watches Keith dig his cracked helmet from the muddied ground of the trench and pull it over his head. Keith tilts his head back, all the way, staring up at the stars, one hand at the side of his helmet. He knows that Keith’s trying to read the stars again, trying to send coordinates again, trying to do something to get them both off this planet. He knows that Keith’s trying, even if what he’s trying won’t work; there’s too much interference here.

A sneer unfolds on Lotor’s face. His thin lips move with words. Lance is too far away to tell what he’s saying.

Keith doesn’t turn, doesn’t say or do anything that shows outwardly that he cares. But Lance notices the slight tension in his shoulders that screams how much he wants to clock the Galra prince in the face.

But they can’t. Not while they’re both stuck here. They can’t knock out the only guy who knows the way out of these trenches. But they _can_ make Lotor think he’s roped Lance into liking him, and they _can_ make him think that one of them is starting to trust him. 

They’ve gone further and further from the acidic mud pools, and the sky is opening up more and more with every step they take. Things haven’t taken a drastic turn for the worst, and seeing less of things that could melt off their faces actually makes them appreciate having the pampered, privileged prince of the Galra Empire with them. Lance just hopes Lotor thinks he’s dumb enough to be wooed. So far, nothing’s really happened aside from the occasional touch and kind gestures. Compliments come a dime a dozen from the Galra Prince’s mouth, and Lance has more than enough energy to play along with a dazzling smile. He doesn’t like it, and Keith seems to be getting more and more impatient by the second, so he hopes — _really_ hopes — that this’ll all end soon. He can’t wait until he and Keith can finally knock Lotor out when they get out of here.

 _If_ they get out at all.

**Author's Note:**

> "s-tover" on Tumblr. Send me prompts, idk :V


End file.
